It’s where everything begins. It’s where you make your first impression. It’s where you’re audience decides whether or not they’re going to give you 45 minutes to an hour of their time. The registration page. Seems simple enough, but a boring, vanilla, unoptimized registration page can be the difference between a webinar with huge registration numbers or one with little to no audience at all. Let’s look at the key components to the perfect webinar registration page
It Needs to Look Good!
People consume with their eyes, and your registration page needs to look good to convert them from a visitor to an actual registrant. If your plate of food didn’t look appealing, you’d be less likely to dig in, right? Take the same approach with your registration page. Too many webinar/online event platforms out there offer little to no customization, and what you’re left with is a plain Jane registration page with no appeal. You should be able to customize the page with your banners, logos, color schemes, branding, call-to-action, presenter pics and bios, etc. Anything to make it look like the registration page is YOURS. Another thing that more and more marketers are starting to leverage on their webinar registration pages are videos. Either a short video talking about the product/solution/service that the webinar is going to focus on, or a webinar ‘trailer’ of sorts giving the audience a quick glimpse into what the presentation is going to cover. Remember, people love consuming short videos and they’re an extremely engaging content marketing tool. If your platform has the capability, it’s something you should look into.
Date & Time, Social Integration:
I like to list the date and time in a few places. If you have a banner at the top of the page, list the date and time within the banner. Another good place to put it is above the abstract. Your platform should provide the ability to save the webinar to an Outlook or Google Calendar. Remember, people’s attention spans are shorter than ever. They don’t remember what they did yesterday, let alone 1-2 weeks ago. Giving them the ability to save it to their calendar is critical. Also, your platform should provide social media integration and give your visitors the ability to share your webinar through various social media channels. This is an effective way to extend your reach and get your message in front of people you otherwise wouldn’t have reached.
The Title and Abstract Must Speak to your Audience:
Your title should be 6-8 words and speak to the target audience you’re going after. Too many webinar titles are entirely too long and lose the audience right off the bat. As for the abstract, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. If you were them and read the abstract, would it be compelling enough to get you to register? I believe every abstract should have a quick intro setting the tone; the body should introduce the speakers and what they’ll be talking about; the conclusion should mention who should attend and the value/educational benefits they’ll get out of attending, and how they’ll be able to interact with the presenters during the webinar (live Q&A, for instance). This format works, plain and simple. Not too long, not too short.
Only Collect the Info you HAVE to Have:
Today’s buyer has thousands of people and hundreds of vendors vying for his/her time. Be cognizant of that and only collect the info you absolutely have to have. I cringe when I see a registration page with 10 plus registration fields. If that’s you, you’re losing registrants because of that…I guarantee it. 5-7 fields should suffice. For us, a common list includes: first name, last name, company, email, title and one qualification question (For example – Are you struggling with converting qualified leads into actual revenue?. That’s 6 and does the trick for us every single time. Try your best to stay in the 5-7 range. Remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for your audience to register. Don’t make it a hassle.
If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon.
Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of ElasticSolutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com